Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Per the video of the stairs included in the article, that's quite evidently a self-serving lie by the city as there was a handrail, and only one handrail is required per the Ontario building code. As for foundation, guess what? According to the building code you don't need one, the steps can rest right on the ground as long as the wood has preservative treatment. And stair risers aren't required to be level beyond a limit of 1:50. Now looking at the video, it's possible the stairs exceed that so that one could be valid but given the city was making it's facts up for the other two, I wouldn't count on it.Per the article, Astl's makeshift steps were not level, did not have a proper safety railing, and had no foundation. Those are pretty valid reasons for not considering them acceptable, and the professionally built ones that replaced them did not have those significant flaws.
In reality the stairs committed the much graver offense of making the city fathers look bad and they were obviously willing to bend the truth however they felt like and make up new regulations on the fly in order to keep themselves from looking bad and pass a ridiculous amount of cash off to somebody who gave the mayor an appropriate campaign contribution.